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Back to: Archive · 2000 The Melody Maker's nasty review of 'The Golden D'. By Robin Bresnark Since when did the term "f***ed-up" become a compliment? If you live in a perfectly nice house, with everything in its neatly appointed place, do you spend your days ripping the shelves off the wall, throwing rubbish all over the floor, slashing inch-wide scars into your carpets? When you take a shit, do you deliberately miss the bowl? Well, that's just f***ed-up. And no, that's not a compliment. Cos "f***ed-up" is the least creative, most reactionary art-form known to man or monkey; brutalising the beauty of order with the ugly truncheon of disorder. Art is all about arranging the basic into the intricate; "f***ed-up" is all about setting progress back 5,000 years and stamping the clock back into cogs. An example: tell your sweetheart, "You love I" and watch them dump you quicker than a diarrhoea-stricken cheetah dumps a gazelle vindaloo. So stop f***ing about and you'll end up less of a w***er. Fact. As you may have guessed, Graham Coxon has f***ed up royally this time. The w***er. There's not one moment of beauty on this dismal LP; not one tune, not one chorus, not even a hint of emotion. OK, that's not exactly true - there is, but it's a cover of Mission Of Burma's staggering "That's When I Reach For My Revolver". That's ace, but it's not Coxon's. No way. In fact, with titles like "Keep Hope Alive", it's almost like he's mocking us, a giant Tate brick smashing into creativity's skull. Forever. All accompanied by the sound of a man with the worst record collection in the world (Sonic Youth to the left, German dustbin-assaulters Einsturzende Neubauten to the right), f***ing things up because he hasn't got a clue how to entertain, empathise or emote. Honestly, whoever called this shit "art-rock" clearly hasn't got the first idea about art. This is a tragedy of imbecility, the victory of violence over love. There are moments when you can sniff some light down the tunnel (buggered if you can see it): the furious commitment of "Jamie Thomas", the ultra-Ash snarl of "Fags And Failure", the almost "Sign O' The Times"-like funk of "Oochy Woochy". But where Prince spun his funk to the skies, Coxon grinds his into a slurry of fashion-victim mulch, a sickly jazz mud of spooked-out, trendy repetition. He's sneering at this stuff. There's no love here. And it's because he's hiding. Because he realises there is no Graham Coxon to speak of, let alone write about. Just a hopeless little man with inordinate access to studios and pressing-plants, permitted to indulge his emptiness beyond measure; as if, by releasing yet another record bearing his name, he might one day develop an identity. Listen to the acidic, Prodigy-styled mess of "Satan I Gatan", to the sub-Korn, metal absurdity of "Leave Me Alone", to the tepid sick of "Lake" and learn absolutely nothing about the man who wrote them. Because there's no one there to learn about. And that really is f***ed-up. (1/5) |